Manjula Padmanabhan is a writer, cartoonist, illustrator and playwright. She has illustrated 24 books for children, ten of them as author-illustrator. These include Mouse Attack (2003, Macmillan Childrens Books) and a series of picture puzzle books for Tulika, including We Are Different! (2013, Tulika) and The World Tour Mystery (2012, Tulika). In 1997, her play for adults, Harvest, won first prize in the Onassis Prize for Theatre, in Greece. Her books for grown-ups include Getting There (Picador, 1999) and Escape (2008, Picador India; 2015, Hachette India). Her next book for adults is a science-fiction novel entitled The Island of Lost Girls (Hachette India). Manjula lives on a small asteroid that orbits between New Delhi in India and Newport (RI) in the USA.